Warning

I read Patrick Cleburne`s recent VDARE.com article on DOJ efforts to stymie Florida initiatives to curb voter fraud with interest. As someone who has spent many years living abroad, I find the failure of commentators on right and left alike to draw comparisons with the practices of comparably advanced/civilized/democratic/post-industrial societies particularly frustrating.

Among progressives, failure to take note of this fact in discussions of anti-voter fraud initiatives is particularly disingenuous, as many of the countries that require photo identification for voting purposes are, in other circumstances—e.g., discussions of health care, education and social policy—held up as models to emulate.

If such advanced countries as France, Germany and Sweden require voters to produce photo id, why exactly are moves on the part of individual states to require the same thing condemned as a barbarous innovation?

It is at least worth noting that this is a point on which much of the world disagrees.